Aw, snap !! Check out the part where he mentions the ever so convenient whitewashing:
Maybe I have something wrong, I don't know any of the players. Here's how I see it: Durova banned a user for opaque reasons, a user so uncommonly righteous that people of consequence were moved to question it. Durova demured, insisting that her secret evidence was a lock, and invoking AGF by saying: "I will be more than happy to explain my research to the arbitration committee. Please take this there if that is your opinion. WP:AGF, please: I don't do something this bold without very good reasons." Ten minutes later she preemptively AGFs her expected detractors, saying: "This has been a tough call, but in my opinion a necessary one. I am very confident my research will stand up to scrutiny. I am equally confident that anything I say here will be parsed rather closely by some disruptive banned sockpuppeteers. If I open the door a little bit it'll become a wedge issue as people ask for more information, and then some rather deep research techniques would be in jeopardy. As I've said this before, take me to arbitration if you want to challenge this." That part has been blanked in one heckuva courtesy, so I don't blame you if you missed it.
Exactly 1hr10m later Durova concedes it's all been a mistake, which is a remarkably short time to disprove all that evidence. In a blaze of non-accountability, she "apologizes" by using the word (only) in the title, claims she likes to be the first to fix her own mistakes, then appears to blame her faulty research on unnamed colleagues for not fixing her mistake sooner (I thought she liked to do that?), and requests early closure and archiving to protect the OTHER person's privacy! On the page we can still see, she claims that even though this one was an error, the accuracy of her secret methods is not in question. She's asked to explain how she determines this, and responds by saying that the question doesn't make any sense to her. Whatever it is she's doing, and she says it's a secret, she seems to intend to keep doing it.
Remember, this only got picked up because the user in question was apparently a saint. A lot of people are troubled by the realization that, if this had been a regular human, it probably would have passed without comment, as Durova was urging. If it can (almost) happen to him, it could happen to a lot of less exemplary users, like me. Please note that I have made no assumptions regarding the sincerity of Durova's initial judgement, because it isn't relevant. But I do find this episode very disturbing, and her interpretation of other people's reasonable criticism of her behaviour as flattering proof that she's "good at this" is completely stunning.
If I have something wrong, please explain; if I've been unclear, please ask. But I don't think it all happened the way it's now being described above, and I don't think this is about public lynchings, but private ones. sNkrSnee | t.p. 05:13, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
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